Marketing planning is the foundation to the success of your business and in an ideal world you have plenty of time for it…No? Download our free best practice mini guide for some quick and simple steps to setting and achieving your digital marketing objectives.

1. BEST PRACTICE MINI GUIDE
PLANNING & MANAGEMENT SERIES
Marketing Planning
C RE A TE D BY S IM P LY D I G ITA L M A R KE T IN G

2. BEST PRACTICE MINI GUIDE: MARKETING PLANNING
INT RO D UC T ION TO DO L I ST
Marketing planning is the foundation 1. Download our free audit
to achieving all three of our template
principles, so it’s important to make 2. Download our free SOSTAC
time for it. In reality, not many marketing plan template
organizations have the resources to 3. Download our free marketing
create a full marketing audit and plan presentation template
plan, but it’s essential to have some
idea of where you’re going and how
you’re going to get there…
B E ST P R AC TI C E
As a minimum you should consider the following high-level steps:
1. Conduct a marketing audit – you can download a full audit template from
our website. Even if you don’t follow it to the letter and do a ‘deep dive’
into your business, analyze the areas which will give you the most valuable
intelligence and help you understand where you are today.
2. Create a marketing plan - use the SOSTAC planning model, which stands for
Situation, Objectives, Strategy, Tactics, Actions and Control. This plan should
be based on the results from your audit and clearly outline your journey to
achieving your objectives. Download a free plan from here.
3. Write clear marketing objectives – always outline your goals against the
SMART acronym, which means Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic
and Time-bound.
4. Communicate your plan – marketing starts at ‘home’, so brief your teams
well. Some plans can be large and complex, so only communicate what’s
relevant and leave the full detail until it’s needed – too much information
will overload people and they’ll lose focus. Download our free PowerPoint
template to help you get started.
5. Evolve - a marketing plan is NOT a one off, annual task. To help you and
your team stay on track, hold a short monthly meeting to re-visit your plan
at a high level and ensure that your objectives are still relevant and that
you’re heading in the right direction. If you’re not, adapt!
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3. BEST PRACTICE MINI GUIDE: MARKETING PLANNING
KEEP UP TO DATE
We hope you found this best practice mini guide useful. Please visit us again for
more insights, guides and templates and if you have any requests, please get in
touch.
Find us at:
SimplyDigitalMarketing .com
@SimplyDigiM and @FollowSDM
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LinkedIN.com/Company/Simply-Digital-Marketing
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Copyright © by Simply Digital Marketing 2013.